The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
The process of producing a circuit board that is customized according to requirements provided by a customer generally begins with collecting the requirements from the customer. A feasibility study may then be conducted to determine whether a custom circuit board that satisfies the customer's requirements can feasibly be produced. If so, an initial design of the circuit board is manually created (e.g., hand drawn), and the initial design is presented to the customer for approval.
After the customer approves of the initial design, an engineer authors a schematic netlist, bill of materials (BOM), and other data that is necessary for production of a first prototype of the custom circuit board. The data is sent to a board designer who is responsible for determining the physical construction and routing of the design using specialized computer aided design (CAD) tools. This data, in turn is provided to a circuit board fabricator that produces the first prototype of the custom circuit board according to the data. In some cases, the designer of the custom circuit board may also serve as the board designer of the custom circuit board.
Comprehensive testing and debugging may be performed on the first prototype. The custom circuit board may be produced and presented to the customer after modifications are made, as necessary, pursuant to the testing and debugging of the first prototype. The period between the collection of the requirements and the production of the custom circuit board may consume a period of approximately six months. By way of non-limiting example and comparison, the custom circuit board may cost the customer approximately one-hundred-thousand dollars (100,000.00 USD).